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Agriculture Official Concedes Errors in Food Stamp Survey

The goal of a $25,000 poll that the Department of Agriculture commissioned from a leading Democratic pollster last year seemed simple enough: survey public opinion on changes in the food stamp program.

But Government investigators said today that a senior official in the department who was overseeing the work directed a series of focus groups instead to gauge the mood of white swing voters in Indiana and Kansas.

Specific questions about the food stamp program were mixed in with politically tinged questions like, "Are things better or worse than they were five years ago?" Ellen Haas, the Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, approved the questions, said the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

Investigators said the focus group sites and participants had little or no relationship to the poll's stated goal. An early draft of the poll's findings repeatedly used terms like "voters," "our side" and "the opposition." The terms were deleted in the final report.

"We believe that the U.S.D.A. exercised questionable judgment in conducting virtually every aspect of this work," said Keith O. Fultz, an assistant comptroller general in the resources, community and economic development division of the accounting office.

Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee, who called a hearing today to investigate the matter, accused the Department of Agriculture of using public money to influence the political debate on welfare, which includes the food stamp program.

"Why are taxpayers' dollars being used to pay for political focus groups?" asked Representative Bill Emerson, Republican of Missouri.

Ms. Haas, one of six under secretaries in the department, acknowledged today that mistakes were made but insisted that they were not politically motivated.

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"In retrospect, how the sites were selected, what questions were asked and how participants were identified should have been done differently," said Ms. Haas, a longtime consumer advocate who oversees an annual budget of $40 billion for 16 nutrition and food assistance programs. "There was never any intention for this to be political or to politically influence anything."

Indeed, the accounting office said it had found no evidence that the focus group findings were ever used for political purposes outside the department or that any criminal laws were broken.

But Mr. Fultz said top officials of the department violated Federal contracting procedures, failed to have the focus group proposal reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget, a White House agency, and did not use common sense. "It's hard to legislate good judgment," Mr. Fultz said.

Government investigators said that Ms. Haas presented the survey idea to Celinda Lake, who is president of Lake Research Inc. and a leading Democratic Party strategist, over a private dinner in February 1995.

Ms. Haas discussed holding four focus groups. Two were to be in Topeka, Kan., in the home state of Representative Pat Roberts, the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, and Senator Bob Dole, the majority leader. And two were to be in Indianapolis, the capital of the home state of Senator Richard G. Lugar, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

A month later, Ms. Haas met with Lake Research to discuss questions for the focus group participants. Three of the four focus groups involved people who were not food stamp recipients. Lake Research and the Agriculture Department sought to interview white registered voters who had voted in the 1992 Presidential election and were between the ages of 30 and 65. In the words of Ms. Haas's executive assistant, who kept detailed notes of the discussions, they were "swing voters."

The fourth focus group mirrored the other three, except the participants were also food stamp recipients.

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A version of this article appears in print on May 9, 1996, on Page B00011 of the National edition with the headline: Agriculture Official Concedes Errors in Food Stamp Survey. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe